LVT and owners of small farms

Ed Dodson with a comment... One of the issues to be dealt with is whether the survival of agriculture near large cities ought to be encouraged as a means of

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, Sep 13, 2004

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Ed Dodson with a comment...
One of the issues to be dealt with is whether the survival of agriculture near large cities ought to be encouraged as a means of reducing the impact on the environment of shipping food long distances to consumers. In the U.S. this is being tried by the introduction of urban growth boundaries (e.g., Portland, Oregon) with mixed results, because (many of us realize) this has been done without a simultaneous shift to LVT. Thus, rising land values within the urban growth corridor are making housing and other development far more costly than would otherwise be the case.
An urban growth boundary is nothing more than tightly enforced zoning that, in effect, takes agriculturally-used land out of the development land market. The net ground rent for land in the region should end up being the same because of the artificial reduction in supply.
It can be argued, of course, that the introduction of LVT at something approaching the full ground rent will draw development inward to where the infrastruction for such development exists, greatly reducing the pressure on outlying agricultural land. Absent LVT and absent some form of urban growth boundary, the tendency for sprawl development to occur is evident so long as government is compliant by building roadways, providing utility rights of way, constructing water and sewerage systems and establishing other public goods and services to support the sprawling development.

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